Jaguar Aims To Go All Electric By 2020

Jaguar has announced that all the cars it produces will be either electric or hybrid by 2020 in a bold bid to join the auto industry’s rapidly growing green movement. The move will place Jaguar in the ranks of Ferrari and Volvo, as well as other industry giants, who have also pledged to create entirely electric or hybrid models in the next few years.

Owned by the Indian company Tata Motors, the British-based Jaguar will also be offering its first fully electric model as soon as 2017, if all goes according to plan. The move will easily put Jaguar in compliance with British regulatory laws by 2040, the year by which law mandates that all cars sold in the U.K. must be either electric or hybrid.

The company had originally given itself more time to embrace greener vehicle models, having originally aimed to offer only half of its lineup as green by 2020, but its latest announcement shows it’s hastening the rate at which it’s adopting electric and hybrid models into its business plan.

Across Europe and the world, other internationally renowned car makers are making it clear they’re also early adopters of greener technologies. The German car company BMW recently announced it would be offering more electric models, for instance, and the Japanese-owned Nissan has also recently announced it’s expanding its lineup of electric offerings.

“The trend towards electric mobility is irreversible. But it will happen in different ways at various speeds in different parts of the world,” BMW’s Klaus Frohlich told BBC News.

Jaguar’s ambitious plan aims to capitalize on its world-renowned image of a sleek car maker that has also adapted to modern times. The company’s announcement included an unveiling of its new E-Type Zero, a classic Jaguar model around for decades that will now be powered by electricity rather than conventional petrol.

Jaguar’s embracing of hybrid and electric vehicles stands to reshape the British auto industry in particular; the company was responsible for nearly 550,000 of the 1.7 million cars produced in Britain last year, according to Reuters, and may explore future projects in the U.K. to help complete the transition to electricity. It’s first electric model, the I-PACE, is set to be built in Austria.

More than 2 million electric cars already ride on the world’s road, according to Fortune, a figure likely to increase as other companies follow the likes of Jaguar and BMW and adopt electric and hybrid models.